On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Güney27]

It all depends on us admitting in humility that our mediative experience of BA, no matter how deep and profound and universal it feels, is still only a constrained intuition of even deeper scales of spiritual activity over which it is modulated. It is these deeper scales that are artistically described by SS.

There can not be any scales "deeper" than Being-Awareness because BA is the very condition and possibility in which any activity of TWF on any scale can ever happen or any beings can ever exist. Just like all layers, structures and depths of the ocean all exist within the ocean and there are no scales deeper than the ocean itself, likewise all scales of spiritual activity always exist and happen in BA and nothing can exist "outside" of BA. But of course, within the "ocean" of BA, there are deeper scales of spiritual activity for us to discover and grow into, which are beyond my current level of cognition and spiritual perception, and I humbly accept that.

But again, in the links you pointed to, I don't see any mention or consideration of BA-aspects or reality. For example, in that Cleric's post the phrase

"Then if we go even further than the national spirits, we can experience the common element in all human beings. This leads us too to a perspective of the World flow that is a coherent be-ing. And this is the be-ing know as the Christ."

is clearly referring to a be-ing, not the Being in how it's envisioned by Heidegger:

"'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings."
M. Heidegger

Heidegger himself becomes entangled in metaphysics again here, as he imposes a limit on the appearance of phenomena, namely Being itself. He assigns a cognitive limit to that which shows itself. Jean-Luc Marion criticizes this approach, attempting to point to that which shows itself, to the pure givenness of phenomena, free from intentionality (in the phenomenological sense). However, for Heidegger, Being is not consciousness or anything similar, so it should not be overly spiritualized.

It is interesting to observe the movements of religions, how God revealed Himself through time: first as an impersonal cosmic creative power, culminating in the personal God, Jesus Christ, who takes on human form in His self-revelation. Jesus Christ is identified with the Logos in the Gospel of John. This means that meaning, significance, was at the beginning. At the beginning was not chaos, but meaning. At the beginning was not "what determines beings as beings," but significance. What would Being, or awareness, be without meaning? Do you think the ocean itself is meaning, or do you see it as an emergent phenomenon that appears later?

[Stranger]

Heidegger himself becomes entangled in metaphysics again here, as he imposes a limit on the appearance of phenomena, namely Being itself. He assigns a cognitive limit to that which shows itself. Jean-Luc Marion criticizes this approach, attempting to point to that which shows itself, to the pure givenness of phenomena, free from intentionality (in the phenomenological sense). However, for Heidegger, Being is not consciousness or anything similar, so it should not be overly spiritualized.

Correct, but at least Heidegger was probably the first one in the Western tradition who discovered and attempted to verbalize the dimension of Being, albeit with many limitations. The dimension of B-A is so infinitely deep that I do not think anyone had or ever will be able to fully comprehend it. Heidegger had just an intuitive glimpse into it, which of course inevitably was limited in many ways.

At the beginning was not chaos, but meaning. At the beginning was not "what determines beings as beings," but significance. What would Being, or awareness, be without meaning? Do you think the ocean itself is meaning, or do you see it as an emergent phenomenon that appears later?

According to my meditative experience and understanding, Beingness-Awareness and Meaning are inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. Being-Awareness can not be without Meaning, but neither Meaning can be without Being-Awareness. Meaning is always first-person known, always being awared of, there is no Meaning existing in some abstract Platonic space without being known-experienced. So, in the beginning there was "what determines beings as beings" inseparably together with its significance.

[AshvinP]

It all depends on us admitting in humility that our mediative experience of BA, no matter how deep and profound and universal it feels, is still only a constrained intuition of even deeper scales of spiritual activity over which it is modulated. It is these deeper scales that are artistically described by SS.

There can not be any scales "deeper" than Being-Awareness because BA is the very condition and possibility in which any activity of TWF on any scale can ever happen or any beings can ever exist. Just like all layers, structures and depths of the ocean all exist within the ocean and there are no scales deeper than the ocean itself, likewise all scales of spiritual activity always exist and happen in BA and nothing can exist "outside" of BA. But of course, within the "ocean" of BA, there are deeper scales of spiritual activity for us to discover and grow into, which are beyond my current level of cognition and spiritual perception, and I humbly accept that.

But again, in the links you pointed to, I don't see any mention or consideration of BA-aspects or reality. For example, in that Cleric's post the phrase

"Then if we go even further than the national spirits, we can experience the common element in all human beings. This leads us too to a perspective of the World flow that is a coherent be-ing. And this is the be-ing know as the Christ."

is clearly referring to a be-ing, not the Being in how it's envisioned by Heidegger:

"'Being' is not something like a being but is rather "what determines beings as beings."
M. Heidegger

That's all fine as a metaphysical abstraction, "Being is what determines beings as beings". But when we begin swimming in the experiential waters of BA itself, we discover scales at which its depth is manifested. And if we want this intimate experience of the scales to become more refined and vivid in our soul over time, we must artistically paint their characteristic dynamics with precise illustrations, metaphors, examples, and living concepts. Otherwise, BA only remains as a blurred-out abstract feeling of unity and universality. The most important consideration is that, in our meditative experience of BA, we are not already at the Fount of creation. The intuitive fabric of our experiencing-awareness-being-etc in this deep meditative state still exists as modulated over deeper scales of activity. It is that activity which imbues our BA state with meaning-significance (and there is no need to arbitrarily separate these into two different things). We could say metaphorically that, no matter how deeply we enter into the Divine silence, our state can still become more silent. We can enter into more and more negative silence, which transforms into the non-sensory intuitive Speech of BA. Speaking of Tomberg and MoT, that is what he describes here:

Concentration without effort—that is to say where there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart—is the state of consciousness (i.e. thought, imagination, feeling and will) of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and the muscles of the body. It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony. And the waters are deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows, ever increasing…what silence! Its growth takes place through regular waves which pass, one after the other, through your being; one wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again a wave of still more profound silence…Have you ever drunk silence? If in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is.

As Guney mentioned before, the states within the negative silence are simply unknown in the nondual traditions before Christ. In the latter, BA becomes flesh and graces humanity with the capacity to resurrect BA from within. Again, at the deeper scales of silence, we don't alternate between inquiring into certain TFW aspects of BA and experientially basking in BA. This is simply not a thing in the Divine life. Experiencing the innermost core of BA and knowing its TFW aspects are the same activity. It's only at the intellectual scale that we can bounce between the poles and feel they are separate activities, separate ways of 'inquiring'. At the deeper scales, 'inquiring into TFW aspects' is the process of continually becoming BA, approaching the Godhead.

I know this will be fiercely resisted, Eugene. Because you have made clear over the years that anything which suggests your meditative BA state is not the equivalent of experiencing the absolute Godhead, is to be rejected out of hand. As long as we float around in abstractions about SS, Tomberg, Heidegger, or whoever, you will say we agree and are all on the same page. But as soon as it is suggested that the meditative BA state still needs to be undressed and purified before it reaches deeper scales of cognition, "Steiner and his followers" become anathema and have somehow entirely missed the 'dimension of Being' which Heidegger glimpsed. But we are simply trying to point attention toward a new way of participating in BA, not as it was encapsulated in age-old traditions or is experienced in blurred-out states, but as it unfolds its crystal clear intuitive essence in real-time through our soul faculties.

[Stranger]

But we are simply trying to point attention toward a new way of participating in BA, not as it was encapsulated in age-old traditions or is experienced in blurred-out states, but as it unfolds its crystal clear intuitive essence in real-time through our soul faculties.

That's great, even though, again, I have not seen it in your previous posts and essays, but I'm glad to see your openness and the fact that we are converging here to some common ground. Just to mention that the participatory path to BA is not new, in the Buddhist and Advaitic traditions it has been around for at least a millennium and is usually called "sahaja samadhi" (which is a state of directly knowing the BA while being actively participating in worldly and spiritual activities, as opposed to the "nirvikalpa samadhi" - a state of deep silence with the suspension of any thinking activity). That does not mean that the SS approach has nothing new to offer here, it indeed does with its richness of methods and insights, which I fully acknowledge.

As I said before, the "blurred-out" states that are and have been practiced in some non-dual schools are simply specific methods to focus on the aspects of BA while de-tuning one's attention from perceptions of forms and from any thinking activity in order to acquire certain intuitive and experiential insights into some aspects of BA. But these are by no means the final or superior states in any way. They do have their usefulness, but their application is rather limited.

[Stranger]

[AshvinP]

But we are simply trying to point attention toward a new way of participating in BA, not as it was encapsulated in age-old traditions or is experienced in blurred-out states, but as it unfolds its crystal clear intuitive essence in real-time through our soul faculties.

That's great, even though, again, I have not seen it in your previous posts and essays, but I'm glad to see your openness and the fact that we are converging here to some common ground. Just to mention that the participatory path to BA is not new, in the Buddhist and Advaitic traditions it has been around for at least a millennium and is usually called "sahaja samadhi" (which is a state of directly knowing the BA while being actively participating in worldly and spiritual activities, as opposed to the "nirvikalpa samadhi" - a state of deep silence with the suspension of any thinking activity). That does not mean that the SS approach has nothing new to offer here, it indeed does with its richness of methods and insights, which I fully acknowledge.

As I said before, the "blurred-out" states that are and have been practiced in some non-dual schools are simply specific methods to focus on the aspects of BA while de-tuning one's attention from perceptions of forms and from any thinking activity in order to acquire certain intuitive and experiential insights into some aspects of BA. But these are by no means the final or superior states in any way. They do have their usefulness, but their application is rather limited.

We aren't converging on common ground, Eugene, which is clear from the fact that you haven't seen the BA approach in anything Steiner or we have expressed so far, and that you think the participatory path we are speaking of has been around for at least a millennium.

It simply makes no sense that the soul could actively participate in the direct knowing of BA while also remaining ignorant of how the lawful dynamics of the sensory spectrum take shape, for example. That is something you have stumbled over several times before and, to your credit, have openly admitted. It certainly takes effort and patience to begin intuiting the overlaps between spiritual processes and sensory dynamics, but more than that, it takes a perspective that is oriented in the right direction. Unfortunately, the modern nondual approaches are not so oriented, but they tend to make souls feel like they have reached the ultimate orientation, which can no longer be questioned. If we say there is a new way, you say it's the way that is already known to you, but for some reason has a fundamental boundary of insight into the lawfulness of sensory dynamics.

As I remarked to Guney, we also don't see any truly inspired modern works from souls on the Sahaja Samadhi path. At best, we get people speaking of theoretical models by which Divine beings create the world through their energy vibrations. We would never get an MoT from such a path, it simply wouldn't happen. Why is that? I know you have a strong distaste for such claims of 'superiority', but in certain cases, they are justified because it's an obvious fact, just like general relativity is superior to Newtonian physics in understanding the lawful gravitational dynamics.

[Stranger]

It simply makes no sense that the soul could actively participate in the direct knowing of BA while also remaining ignorant of how the lawful dynamics of the sensory spectrum take shape, for example. That is something you have stumbled over several times before and, to your credit, have openly admitted. It certainly takes effort and patience to begin intuiting the overlaps between spiritual processes and sensory dynamics, but more than that, it takes a perspective that is oriented in the right direction. Unfortunately, the modern nondual approaches are not so oriented, but they tend to make souls feel like they have reached the ultimate orientation, which can no longer be questioned. If we say there is a new way, you say it's the way that is already known to you, but for some reason has a fundamental boundary of insight into the lawfulness of sensory dynamics.

As I said many times before, "the direct knowing of BA while also remaining ignorant of how the lawful dynamics of the sensory spectrum take shape" is insufficient. But equally insufficient is the knowledge of "of how the lawful dynamics of the sensory spectrum take shape" without the direct knowing of BA.

[Cleric]

The following has been discussed and illustrated many, many times, including above, but let’s add one more picture.

Let’s start from the basics.



Above, we have an artistic depiction of our inner experience. This should be completely comprehensible to anyone who has had at least some contact with the popular idealistic ideas of our age (BK, DH, etc.). So basically, the sphere symbolizes our inner experience – the only thing we ever know. It needs to be thought of as experienced from within, and not seen from the outside.

Anyone who has at least some notion of metaphors like the dashboard and the idea of ‘core subjectivity’ should be able to conceive of an inner ‘axis’ (of course, grasped with the needed imaginative flexibility). Below, the ‘Southern Hemisphere’ (SH) is the dashboard. Obviously, in reality, we have phenomena in the full volume of inner space, not only in the geometrical lower half of inner space. The Northern Hemisphere (NH) is the approach to pure Being (core subjectivity, MAL, etc.). Our states can transform along that axis. For example, it can be said that the ordinary man of today is practically sucked into the dashboard experience below, to the extent that one feels completely fused with the patterns of state transitions, thus one rightfully feels to be united with the inner experience of the flesh, and thus the flow of physical metamorphoses.

We move ‘up’ the axis toward the NH when we try to ‘step out of the movie’ (as discussed at length with Mike). We aim to resist the suction of the flow patterns of the Southern Hemisphere and plunge into pure Awareness and pure Be-ing.

When Guney speaks of the forces, processes, small-‘b’ beings, this implies the SH. The characteristic of this experience is that we experience the Being of the Cosmos through certain indirection. To understand this we need to grasp two aspects.

First, we can envision inner space consisting of white phenomenal ‘light’. We can try to envision the whole of infinite inner space as filled with all possible colors, frequencies of sound, intensities of warmth, etc. Now we can imagine ‘hollowing out’ this inner space, blotting out phenomenal pixels, such that we remain with tactile sensations filling a volume that we recognize as our human form. Auditory and visual phenomenal ‘pixels’ are correspondingly filtered to leave only that which is our present perceptual experience, and so on. This should be fairly easy to conceive for anyone.

The second aspect is that this filtering is not arbitrary but is in a sense complementary to the most varied processes that also have their perspective of Be-ing, but we have no direct awareness of them.

This leads us to an important observation. When we speak of forces, process, and small-‘b’ beings, we basically speak of the way the mysterious total flow of Being is impressed in our inner space. If we imagine our inner space as the wax, then the Being of everything outside our personal perspective of Being is like the seal.

The fatal error of all ages is to try to find Being (the seal) side-by-side with the wax phenomena (SH) (thus the “do not make an image of your God” commandment). If we take the metaphor literally, we are prone to do that, because in our visual perception both the wax and the seal are perceptions. But in our inner space, what we experience as phenomena is always the effects of purely intuitive Being. The simplest example is when I experience someone pushing me. My phenomenal flow (SH) is modified, tactile pixels intensify which I recognize as the pressure of the push, my visual pixels portray the person pushing me, and so on. But all of these are modifications in the wax aspect of inner space (dashboard). The Being of the person pushing me cannot be seen in the wax pixels that I experience.

I believe that up to this point, we’re all on the same page. I suspect that even Lorenzo would be able to agree. At this stage, our experience is still more or less dissociative. We feel with immediacy only the Being of our own worldline, while the Being of everything else is known only indirectly by contemplating how our phenomenal sphere is being filtered, constrained, modulated, etc.

Now we are at a crossroad from whence the differences begin.

The central question is: How do we find the reality of the Being of the Cosmos? At the start, the answer seems obvious: Well, obviously, by keeping purifying our inner flow and approaching more and more the North pole, the Fountainhead, the limitless ocean of pure potential. So far, so good. Now, however, there are different ways in which we may expect this journey to feel like. The most appetizing way is to imagine that we become more and more free of the suction of the SH and we find our Being more and more in the limitless potential.

This sounds good. The question is, do we encounter somewhere along the way the Being of other beings? This is where tension between the North and South poles builds up. Generally, we’re used to dealing with small-‘b’ beings only within the SH, where we interpret the wax patterns of inner space. This makes it feel as if when we liberate our Being from the suction of the SH patterns, we also become free from our entanglements with beings. We can illustrate this in the following way:



Here we have the same idea as before, but also trying to comprehend the greater picture, where we need to also consider the Being of other beings. In this view, we’re entangled in the phenomenal sphere (SH). However, the higher we reach into the North pole of Being, the more independent we become from other beings. Asymptotically, it can be said that our individual being projects from a unique point on the surface of the sphere of pure potential. For example, if we imagine that the sphere of entanglement was to suddenly disappear, the perspectives would lose all contact. We suddenly remain completely alone in the purified space of Being. One would immediately object: “But we are all one with the sphere of pure potential!” Yes, we are. But this remains only a vague, infinitely diffused feeling. It can be compared to the feeling modern man has when thinking about aliens: “The Universe is so vast! Other life is bound to exist somewhere else too!” Yes, and we have a very peculiar feeling about the expectation of this life somewhere out there. But in concreteness, we have nothing. A similar picture is drawn when scientists depict the grim fate of the eternally expanding universe, where galaxies grow further and further apart, to the extent that they cannot even exchange photons. Yes, as a general feeling, we say “But the Universe is still One, we are all One,” however, our worldline of Being is contracting into an infinitely isolated point. This is how we celebrate our freedom of Being and absolute self-determination (independence from everything else).

If there’s one conclusion to draw from this view, it is that the inner Being of the Cosmos (which includes the Being of all beings) is in principle unknowable. We assume that our perspectives emerge from the One potential at infinity, yet in practice, we know only a personal flow of Being. All other Beings we only know indirectly by interpreting the way our inner space wax is being pushed and pulled.

This view can be contrasted with the image often used here:



In a sense, here we have the complete inversion of the above conception. Now every Being emerges from the total surface of the sphere of pure potential. Personalization comes from the fact that there are different ‘angles’ from within which the interference can be followed. The closer the perspective is to the unity of all potential, the more existence feels like a Cosmic spiritual process, where a perspective lives not with personal interpretation of the wax patterns but directly with the inner Being of countless perspectives. To know another Being at these heights is to assume its perspective of Being. Consider this image:



We start with an ordinary image of a landscape and apply very simple transformations (rotation, mirroring, scaling), over and over again. Very soon, the original image is unrecognizable. Now it feels like we look at some geometric patterns. We can conceive of the spectrum of Being in a similar way. At the highly integrated Cosmic heights, the phenomenal spectrum feels like superfluidic, weightless, frictionless, phenomenal flow, which reflects the intuitive intents of Being, much like the sounds of our inner voice feel translucent and reflecting our intuitive navigation. Picture an inner perspective that is concentric to ours, but for some reason no longer understands the meaning of the mental words that we precipitate. For that perspective, these words become ‘heavier’; they now feel like a denser phenomenal experience (SH). It’s like saying “I can feel that there’s intuitive intent shaping these sound phenomena, but I don’t comprehend it. I can’t align with the meaningful curvature through which the words flow. For me, these sounds stand out as a phenomenal environment that I’m forced to navigate according to my partial intuitions.” A bird builds a coherent nest from the most varied twigs and debris. In the process, the intuition of the trees is obscured, and now a geometric pattern takes shape, just like in the iterations above. In a similar way, limited perspectives of Being are forced to patch their coherent worldline from the phenomenal patterns of higher, more integrated flows of Being. It is important not to imagine that these patterns are somehow detached and form a separate ‘created’ world. Rather, it would be better to conceive of this as in the pottery metaphor. The phenomenal spectrum is the frame-by-frame collective effect of all simultaneously active intuitive intents. The other important thing is not to imagine that the higher beings create planets, rocks, plants, animals, etc., in the way we visually see the spatial world and imagine putting objects there. Instead, all creation is the refinement and filtration of inner phenomenal space. When the flow of metamorphosis of this inner space becomes more and more frictious and resisting, we can already speak of inner bodily space. The view of the Cosmos from a spatial perspective is something unique to human beings and only began at the moment when the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, and they saw that they were naked. It is at this moment that the suction of the phenomenal patterns takes the upper hand, and man gradually loses the awareness of the way inner space was filtered to that stage.

I think these two illustrations pinpoint the crux of the problem. The first view is often the default preference for man of our age, emerging from the phenomenological fragments. This, however, puts the two poles into irreconcilable tension. Dealing with small-‘b’ beings by its very nature feels like an antipode of Being. This is the critical thing to realize. In the first view, dealing with beings by definition means dealing with wax imprints. The true Being of these beings is unknowable, unexperiencable. Thus, to have relations with beings, one needs to look at the SH, which feels as forsaking the NH (Being). Focusing on the NH (Being and Awareness as pure essence) is seen as an ascent toward the formless, Being in free potential, independent of other beings.

In the second view, spiritual ascent doesn’t lead us away from beings but leads us right into their Being. In other words, we disentangle from the indirectness of the fragmentary phenomenal flow and live closer and closer together the inner Being of the Cosmos. In other words, to know the mystical depths of True Being is to know how other Beings live in our Being and vice versa, ultimately all forming the coherent Being of the One. In this view it is nonsensical to seek true experience of the essence of Being in isolation, for our individual perspective only. We can only find that if we are ready to discover all Beings (not small-'b' wax beings) within our flow of Being. This has been very aptly illustrated by Ashvin’s recent quote:

Thus, mark well: When man directs his gaze outwards and observes, he lives with the outer world; he loses himself in it. In our planet, for instance, he loses himself in the various kingdoms of nature. But when he diverts his gaze from outside, he enters his own inner being and lives an independent inner life, and he is then free from this external world. When these beings of which we speak as a first category above man, are active externally, they then manifest themselves; they have their feeling of self, their actual self-expression in this manifestation; and when they enter their inner being they do not enter into an independent inner life, as does man, but a life in common with other worlds. Just as man enters such a life when he perceives the external world, so do they perceive other spiritual worlds above them when they look into themselves; they then enter this other condition of consciousness, in which they find themselves filled with other beings higher than themselves. So, as regards man we say that when he loses himself in the external world, he has his perceptions; when he withdraws from the external world, he has his independent inner life. The beings belonging to the next higher category—we call them, speaking generally, the beings of the so-called Third Hierarchy—instead of perception have manifestation, and in this manifestation or revelation they experience themselves. Instead of an inner life, they have the experience of higher spiritual worlds, that is to say, they are filled with Spirit. This is the most essential difference between man and the beings of the next higher category.

This is practically a word-for-word description of everything illustrated so far. The opposition of the two views produces the patterns we have seen countless times:

1. Anything that is said about beings, the Cosmic processes, etc. is automatically seen as mere wax patterns in the SH. Then one says, “There’s nothing wrong with studying these patterns in the SH, trying to give them shape, be creative in them, and so on, but this should be balanced with the NH – with Being and Awareness.” The latter, however, is nothing but the disguised intensification of the egoic sense of Being to Cosmic proportions. This Cosmically inflated ego wants to feel self-determined through and through, which means gradually liberating itself from all connections with beings (and their hidden Being), practically reducing itself to a distinct point in the One sphere of potential, independent of all other Beings.

2. In the second view, we also raise toward the NH but once we cross the threshold of death (the threshold of Initiation when this is experienced while still in Earthly shape), we begin to experience that our Being is weaved of the Being of all beings that hitherto we have known only indirectly through the way their pushes and pulls impress in the volume of inner space circumscribed by our bodily form. From within this deeper state of Being, we are able to express the lawfulness, the intents we flow with. Those of view 1 who hear such descriptions, as said, immediately dismiss them as metaphysical analyses of the phenomenal wax. They say, “On my way to the North Pole, there’s no other Being than my own. If you speak of other beings, you must be speaking of the wax shapes. The inner Being of those beings is nowhere to be found on my lone ascent to complete liberation of my unique point of Being.

(Federica’s post addresses the same questions from a different angle, which, however, requires far more intimate experience of Being and its reflections in the wax, thus, to be honest, I doubt that it has been understood.)

[AshvinP]

I would like to add a basic occult physiology perspective on this difference between the spiritual scientific path of intuitive thinking, and the mystical path to oneness. The legitimacy of drawing such parallel between spiritual paths and the human organism is illustrated by the well-known ideas of microcosm (of the human being) as a compressed image of the macrocosm (the whole reality); duality of the human experience across spiritual and material worlds; “as above so below”; body-soul-spirit; etcetera. In fact, each distinct path and associated meditation technique - spiritual scientific concentration of thought and feeling on the one hand, and mystical meditation on the other - have their own specific images, or effects, on the entire human organism, including the material body.

I had missed this post before Cleric mentioned it. Very well stated and summarized, Federica!

I think it especially goes to show how the seemingly complex details of human nature elucidated by spiritual science are not simply optional inquiries into various TFW aspects, but they are artistic expressions of the very fabric of humanity's spiritual evolution into the Being of beings. They help us get a lucid sense of how our compressed intellectual perspective can grow into the higher-order interference patterns of Being that shape it, without undue risk of harm to our bodily and psychic constitution (such as the unchecked ego inflation that you and Cleric pointed to), and with an opportunity to discern how Being lawfully impresses into the wax of our phenomenal space. As we should expect in any monistic and idealistic outlook, all the details of daily experience are inextricably intertwined with the deepest essences of Being-Awareness.

[Federica]

I would like to add a basic occult physiology perspective on this difference between the spiritual scientific path of intuitive thinking, and the mystical path to oneness. The legitimacy of drawing such parallel between spiritual paths and the human organism is illustrated by the well-known ideas of microcosm (of the human being) as a compressed image of the macrocosm (the whole reality); duality of the human experience across spiritual and material worlds; “as above so below”; body-soul-spirit; etcetera. In fact, each distinct path and associated meditation technique - spiritual scientific concentration of thought and feeling on the one hand, and mystical meditation on the other - have their own specific images, or effects, on the entire human organism, including the material body.

I had missed this post before Cleric mentioned it. Very well stated and summarized, Federica!

I think it especially goes to show how the seemingly complex details of human nature elucidated by spiritual science are not simply optional inquiries into various TFW aspects, but they are artistic expressions of the very fabric of humanity's spiritual evolution into the Being of beings. They help us get a lucid sense of how our compressed intellectual perspective can grow into the higher-order interference patterns of Being that shape it, without undue risk of harm to our bodily and psychic constitution (such as the unchecked ego inflation that you and Cleric pointed to), and with an opportunity to discern how Being lawfully impresses into the wax of our phenomenal space. As we should expect in any monistic and idealistic outlook, all the details of daily experience are inextricably intertwined with the deepest essences of Being-Awareness.

Thanks Ashvin! Yeah... I was hoping that a hint into the physical effects of the two opposite meditation techniques - even if only received a bit abstractly, which is also how I understand it - could help get a sense of how the mystical path really is barred today, and that the willed intellectual soul we have now achieved makes all the difference. We have to go through the freedom the intellectual soul now grants us, heading towards the Divine through consciousness in the thought and feeling process, rather than through the unconscious unwilled, the dilution of spiritual activity.

As an analogy, it makes me think of a dear one who for years and years and years (not anymore) had resisted every Windows update after XP since all their specific softwares were fixed and running under Windows XP, which of course used to cause all sorts of problems and limitations.

Similarly, the modern mystic for some reason fiercely refuses to update their version of spiritual operative system, so to say. Unfortunately, the consequences are harsher than one may imagine. As it has been said - and I guess the ancient mystics would fully agree - the human organism is not our individual possession. We have been given it for a precise purpose of transcendence. And if we go about it in time-flawed, evolution-flawed ways, only to stick to personal preferences, ignoring that we have now been granted the full potential to go about it in conscious freedom of will, what this means is that we are unfortunately sinning against Divine destiny.